Laser Assisted Hatching – A fertilized embryo has an outer shell called Zona Pellucida, also called Zona for short. The embryo, when it is at the blastocyst stage on the fifth or the sixth day needs to break out of the Zona Pellucida. Sometimes the shell or the cyst is too hard or thick for the embryo to break out. Therefore, to assist the hatching process an artificial hole is made into the cyst using laser rays so that the embryo can break out easily. This process is called Laser Assisted Hatching.